All-sky Information Content Analysis for Novel Passive Microwave Instruments in the Range from 23.8 GHz up to 874.4 GHz

摘要

We perform an all-sky information content analysis for channels in the millimeter/submillimeter wavelength with 24 channels in the region from 23.8 up to 874.4 GHz. Our set of channels corresponds to the instruments ISMAR and MARSS, which are available on the British FAAM research aircraft, and it is complemented by two precipitation channels at low frequencies from Deimos. The channels also cover ICI, which will be part of the MetOp-SG mission. We use simulated atmospheres from the ICON model as basis for the study and quantify the information content with the reduction of degrees of freedom (ΔDOF). The required Jacobians are calculated with the radiative transfer model ARTS. Specifically we focus on the dependence of the information content on the atmospheric composition. In general we find a high information content for the frozen hydrometeors, which mainly comes from the higher channels beyond 183.31 GHz (on average 4.99 for cloud ice and 4.84 for snow). Profile retrievals may be possible for the mass densities and some information about the microphysical properties, especially for cloud ice, can be gained. The information about the liquid hydrometeors comes from the lower channels and is comparably low (2.36 for liquid cloud water and 1.81 for rain). There is little information about the profile or the microphysical properties. The Jacobians for a specific cloud hydrometeor strongly depend on the atmospheric composition. Especially for the liquid hydrometeors they even change sign in some cases. However, the information content is robust. For liquid hydrometeors it slightly decreases in the presence of any frozen hydrometeor, for the frozen hydrometeors it slightly decreases in the presence of the respective other frozen hydrometeor. The overall results with regard to the frozen hydrometeors in principlealso hold for the ICI sensor. This points to its great ability to observe ice clouds from space on a global scale with a good spatial coverage in unprecedented detail.